Advance Warning: Forum Permissions Overhaul

[Ronin Storm]

Everyone:

Either very late Sunday evening or early on Monday morning I'm going to overhaul the forum permissions. This may have any of the following effects:

• You might not be able to post.
• You might not see any forums.
• You might be able to see things you weren't interested in.
• You might be right in the middle of something when suddenly your permissions are pulled out from under you.

Hopefully you'll all miss the event and everything with continue to run smoothly.

This needs doing because, in short, I've used the vB permissions system backwards and it's not going to be maintainable in its current form. Now I know more about vB I know what I should have done in the first place...

Likely total time from start to finish is a couple of hours. I'll post when I'm starting, and something in the shoutbox too (just in case nothing else is visible).

Just hang on to your hats...

 

[Ronin Storm]

I'm beginning the overhaul in the next 15 minutes. It may continue for up to a couple of hours (say until 13:00 today).

I'd suggest avoiding posting for the moment and coming back when I've posted the "all clear".

 

[Pestcontrol]

Oops. Good luck with it!

EDIT: BTW, isn't it possible to put the forums in an offline mode, so all mortals just get a "boards closed for maintainance" message? Or is this exactly what you've done.

 

[Ronin Storm]

BTW, isn't it possible to put the forums in an offline mode, so all mortals just get a "boards closed for maintainance" message?

I figured that there'd be so few mortals wandering through that the few who did would make useful test subjects. I was also planning to use a test account for permissions testing but it's taken so long to do the analysis and reconfiguration that I've not had chance.

I've completed the overhaul. In some areas it has improved, in others less so. I believe that everything is rational, though, and functioning to provide everyone with access to the things they could see before. There have been some global permissions changes around what users can do to their own posts or to their own profiles -- check and make sure you can do everything you expected to do and post if you see any problems (I might tell you, of course, that it was a mistake in the first instance!).

So, "all clear", from my end. Back to posting!